Is Telemarketing still effective today?

Hi and welcome back to my blog. Another busy week in Sydney, enjoying Vivid and being home for a while.

Telemarketing…. Ah… many of us think of the unwanted evening call when you have just sat down to dinner. Is there still a place for this type of selling? You bet!

There is still no better ‘one-on-one’, direct marketing approach than telemarketing to reach decision makers. Not only does telemarketing deliver sales, it is also flexible enough to help with lead generation and even data gathering. It should come as no surprise then that contact centres account for some $900 billion dollars in annual sales. (Source: ATA).

Telemarketing is one of the most effective techniques for lead qualification and nurturing.

Many companies use this technique in their lead generation arsenal today.

The Benefits of Telemarketing

Telemarketing can work with either ‘cold’ or ‘warm’ lists . You can use telemarketing to acquire new customers and clients, close deals and progress leads with people you’ve already contacted. You can use telemarketing also to sell to existing customers.

It is direct and it elicits a direct response. This means immediate results. It provides a direct return on investment.

Good telemarketers can listen as well as talk. Unlike most advertising channels, your message can be tailored to each specific customer. Telemarketing can be used for gathering information and feedback.

It can be used to increase the effectiveness of other marketing efforts. This is particularly true of direct mail. Using telemarketing before a direct mail campaign can identify potential prospects and weed out uninterested leads. When used after direct mail it can massively improve response rates.

Telemarketing can be used to collect intelligence about your market place, prospective or existing customers, your competitors or anything. It is often used to update customer files.

Apart from it’s direct approach, the key benefits of telemarketing revolve around the fact that your message is delivered by people, to people. If you can use that flexibility to your advantage and can make the numbers work financially, telemarketing may be something worth trialling in your business.